Re: BPCS maintenance

> Update:
>
> The SSAGT price has now changed to 2 years back maintenance and
> reduced
> maintenance fee for this year and a key.   Does anyone have a similar
> experiences?

> Good Day fellow BPCS users,
>
> We have used BPCS since 1993 and are currently using 405CD.  We paid
> OGS
> for 10 years.
>
> Since we had no plans to upgrade after 405CD, we cancelled our OGS and
> moved to Named user pricing several years ago.  We have maintained our
> license for named users per our agreement.
>
> Now, we need to upgrade our processor.  We were informed by our SSAGT
> rep
> that we would have to pay for one year maintenance (plus tax) in
> order to
> receive a key for the upgrade.
>
> This seems like an unreasonable amount of money, considering the
> product
> is no longer being updated or significantly improved.   We currently
> pay 'right to use' fees to other vendors, that are far less as a % of
> purchase $.
>
> Has anyone been in this situation and would you share you result?  If
> you prefer,  feel free to contact me at the number below.

Claudia, welcome to the world of SSA/GT.  GT found out that there's a lot
of money to be made by charging whatever they feel like charging because
most of the prior SSA contracts were so poorly written that GT could
interpret them to their benefit.  Most everyone remembers when they could
obtain a new permanent with no problems if they were on user-based pricing.
GT realized that this was a vast untapped market and implemented their
ransom demands for past OGS fees, regardless of the status of the product.

SSA used to make their money when people had to upgrade their hardware
since the software was tier based.  I figure that SSA went through a bad
cashflow period in the mid-90's and implemented user based pricing in order
to get a large influx of cash.  The downside to this was the cessation of
cash whenever anyone upgraded their machine.

These scenarios are exactly the reason why companies such as Oracle buy
software companies such as Peoplesoft, they can gain a large cash flow
market by upping the maintenance fees while reducing the improvement of the
product.

Bill